Cappuccio Works To Overcome 'Pop In Knee'

SPORTS

September 29, 1991|By Jeff Babineau, Of The Sentinel Staff

The early evening storm clouds forming over center field at Alfond Stadium do nothing to dampen the scene. Players scatter across the outfield grass, playing pepper, joking with one another, laughing as they play.

It is baseball as Norman Rockwell might have painted it.

Carmine Cappuccio is grateful to be part of that scene.

Cappuccio, a senior at Rollins College who is one of the state's top baseball prospects, had the game abruptly taken away from him six months ago. On opening day against the University of Central Florida, he rounded first base after a sharp single to right field, his left foot hit a hole, and he felt a pop in his left knee.

He didn't think it was anything serious, but he was wrong. The anterior cruciate ligament in his knee, a ribbon of tissue about 1 1/2 inches in length, had torn. The knee had to be surgically reconstructed, and today he wears a cumbersome brace on his leg, a reminder that marks him a card-carrying member of sports' every-growing ACL Club.

Athletes the caliber of NBA star Bernard King have successfully returned to athletic form after an ACL injury. Some, such as former University of Kansas basketball star Danny Manning, never have been the same.

Carmine Cappuccio wants to be one of the success stories. And why not? His story has always been one of success.

''My doctor told me that the surgery went fine, that the ligaments are solid,'' Cappuccio said. ''I guess now it's all up to me.''

His first test will be a difficult one. Cappuccio had expected it to arrive when the Tars opened their 1992 season in February. That debut has been pushed up.

Cappuccio is one of 90 players invited to Homestead in November for a tryout with the United States Olympic team that will travel to Barcelona, Spain, next summer.

Representing this country on a baseball field would fulfill a dream. Part of him seems very excited. Another part seems apprehensive. He hopes the knee will be ready.

''All this therapy is getting pretty boring, but I get through it by visualizing myself playing again,'' he said. ''It's something I want, something I have to work hard to get.

''It's funny, because I've never had trouble with anything in sports before. Everything always worked out just right for me. It's almost like I'd been carrying a lucky rabbit's foot around in my back pocket. This is something I finally have to work for. Maybe all of this will make me better.''

Cappuccio, a right fielder who batted .404 as a sophomore and has 111 RBIs in 116 games at Rollins, candidly admits the past six months have been six long months. He had athroscopic surgery done the day after he was injured, and reconstructive surgery five weeks later, in March.

The technique was a patellar-graft, where a band of the patellar tendon was removed from his left knee and inserted with screws between the tibia and femur, replacing the ACL.

The return to baseball has been of the crawl-before-you-walk variety: Cappuccio began with simple leg extensions and gradually moved to walking on the treadmill, jogging and working out on an exercise bike. He takes swings in the batting cage, but cannot run the bases yet. Wednesday, he tested the knee's progress by sprinting for the first time.

''I felt like jelly, like I'd never run before,'' he said. ''But it felt good.''

John Fulgham, the first-year coach at Rollins, had heard a lot about Cappuccio before he arrived in Winter Park this summer. Some scouts told Fulgham he would be inheriting the best pure hitter in the state, and certainly one of the top pro prospects.

''It's probably unfair, but when I met him, I expected him to be a little more cocky, more arrogant,'' Fulgham said. ''He's not like that at all. He's very personable, very level-headed.

''He seemed very surprised when I told him about the Olympic tryouts. A lot of players with his talent who were selected probably would have said 'I should have been.' He doesn't expect that sort of adulation. Even though he deserves those types of things, he doesn't expect them. That's unique.''

Cappuccio was a phenomenal all-around athlete at Malden (Mass.) High School. As a sophomore, he started on the varsity football, basketball and baseball teams, and as a senior, he was named The Greater Boston League's most valuable player in all three sports. His baseball jersey, No. 17, was retired the day after he graduated in 1988. The Daily News-Mercury in Malden named him Greater Boston's prep athlete of the decade.

''Must not have been a very good conference,'' Cappuccio said, laughing.

College coaches obviously thought otherwise. A two-time all-state baseball player, Cappuccio was expected to sign with either the University of Maine or the University of New Hampshire - to play football. But when the day came to decide between the schools, he informed both he wasn't coming.

He wanted to play baseball, and play someplace he could play year-round. One visit to Rollins, and he was sold.

Nobody can question Cappuccio's loyalty. Last June, the Chicago White Sox drafted him in the 30th round and made what he considered a fair offer, one that exceeded $30,000. The decision he feared would be so difficult - turning pro or returning to Rollins - wasn't tough at all. His goals of becoming a pro would wait. He returned to Winter Park.

''I was glad that a (pro) team saw enough in me to make me an offer,'' he said. ''I thought the decision would be tough, but it really wasn't. I wanted to get my degree (in economics), and I wanted to come back to a place where I was familiar with the people, a place where my friends are.''